Well, Plato is a genius. He has managed to drain this game of all excess. And I mean that as a compliment.

This spectacular competition will have consumed the personal storage of many of the most active players in the game. For instance, an Easy Company member who hits in D4 spent 187 Energy Bars in a battle today. He hadn't bought any of them. That is 6 months of Daily Orders Rewards saved up which Plato has redeemed. Starting in 4 days, the only Energy Bars being spent will be those won by the victors, and those to be bought. It will take the rest of the eWorld some time to resupply themselves via DO.

Bazookas are getting blown through by players who hit under 10K. Stockpiles of missiles and bombs will likely be exhausted by the end of this. Gold stores were depleted on 2x Energy Bars, so it'll be save it up or buy it for whatever comes for sale next.

And I think that's the point here. Whether it will be Q5 Training Grounds, Guerilla Fight Equipment production, Q8 weapons (EGAD Plato better keep that promise!), a sudden slashing across the board of production values, or some other Premium, it will only be purchased with bought Gold. I expect something major to hit within a few weeks of the end of this contest.

So once again, I tip my hat to the current developers of this game. This is a masterstroke of a business decision. Somebody give Plato a shiny gold medal.

And that brings me to another point. That isn't even a picture of Plato, it's Aristotle. Google it if you don't believe me. But I digress.

For me there are two questions worth pondering.

One of them isn't, "how can Plato be so greedy for our stuff?" If you can't get over the fact that this is a game which is designed to operate as a business for the benefit of its true investors, you need to check your foil hat at the door. This is a very good internet business which also happens to be a very successful game enjoyed by thousands.

No, here are the two questions that interest me:

1: How many will lose interest in this game because they've spent themselves out? How many are using this contest as their "last hurrah"?

2: Will our game developers invest the income they've generated from this incredible show of Gold consumption into new game features? Or will it result mostly in company profit?

As to the first question, I am sure there will be some who, having burned through one thousand, eight hundred seventy extra mouse clicks, will suddenly realize that they have just "aged" that much closer to D4 and have very little to show for it. Some others will face the question of whether they are willing to invest another 6 months of saving on clicking here or might they invest those 6 months clicking some other game.

Of course I hope everyone will stick around. I hope that the MU's of US-AIM will come out of this stronger across the board, and that the USAF will feel a sense of pride at getting one of its units somewhere into the top 5. I hope that all of the cooperation between MU's such as the exemplary cooperation between S.H.I.E.L.D and EZC (much respect to S.H.I.E.L.D.) will bear fruit in strengthening the overall military effectiveness of eUSA as well as increase the communal aspect of the game. I hope everyone goes and buys a ton of gold and sticks around.

As for question #2, only time will tell. I will say one thing, Plato has already made the single most awesome improvement I have seen in the media module ever. It appears that we have been given a "saved draft" feature for while writing articles.

This beautiful new feature is saving your newspaper article as you write it. If you get logged out, and have forgotten to save your work manually, and you try to publish, and you get that red hot angry face because you think you've just lost your entire article... just log back in, enter your newspaper, click "write article", and all your awesome work will reappear right where it was during the last save state. This feature auto-saves about every 20 seconds.

Thank you Aristotle Plato

But what else will they be bringing to the game?

I would like to invite the writers of eRepublik to engage in a bit of a writing competition.

You must publish an original article with your answer to the following question:

With all of the huge piles of greenbacks Plato is rolling in from the MU Contest, what ONE cool feature should they develop for our game?

Category 2, the OK, Keep Wearing that Tin Foil Hat award:
This prize of 5 Gold will be awarded to the stupidest idea published. The award will be given without the 5 Gold if the winning author seems actually convinced that his idea is even remotely reasonable. This is usually ascertainable by how vehemently he defends his idiotic idea in the comments.Kara Beth's EntryJackson Cousteau's Entryolivermellors' Entry

Category 3, the We Don't Need Any More of Your Good Ideas, Thank You award:
This prize of 5 Gold will be awarded to the best answer which involves in any way more tweaks to the Military Module. You will be hated, also, by most of your readers. But hell, 5 Gold is 5 Gold. Oh, and if you mention Q8 you will be DQ'd.Derphoof's Entry

Category 5, Best in Show.
5 Gold to the best article from among the four categories.

You will have until the end of the MU Tournament to publish your works. A link to your entry must be PM'd to me prior to reset on day 2009-2010. You MUST identify which category you are entering, or else I get to decide for you. And if I don't like your article, I'll place it into the wrong category and you will lose. This may also happen if I don't like you. So identify your category.

I will update this article and publish another in order to publicize the links to your article.

I will be especially looking to be entertained. So no derp.

Now I've got some Red Button to click.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking

~~"1: How many will lose interest in this game because they've spent themselves out? How many are using this contest as their "last hurrah"?"

Currently burning through all the bars I have saved in the last 1.25 years. It feels liberating...one step closer to quitting completely. Having all that damage stored up was a weight and now it feels lifted.
ty Plato, my eMancipator!

That writing contest sounds like fun...maybe I'll stay around for that : P

" I hope that all of the cooperation between MU's such as the exemplary cooperation between S.H.I.E.L.D and EZC (much respect to S.H.I.E.L.D.) will bear fruit in strengthening the overall military effectiveness of eUSA as well as increase the communal aspect of the game. "

I think Plato set this tournament up extra good at least for his pocket book. The timing of the buying extra gold and the 2x bars was perfect timing to get ready for this tourney.
What he does with all the extra $$, my guess he will work on more things like this to draw out the $$ from our pocket books.

Everyone has 1000 healt point. We have houses 7 levels.
6 levels are producing by players, except house level 7. You can only buy it.
Every house level meaning +1000 healt.
lower levels houses have a bigger duration than higher level houses, and they are also cheaper than higher levels.
I think that is very important that all itmes (food, weapon) with high Q levels have shorter duration than lower Q levels items.

Stop punishing people for gaining experience by moving them to higher divisions. Working and training gives 2x the xp you get from fighting. The divs should be determined on strength and the STR thresholds shouldn't be fixed like d2 5k, d3 15k, d4 30k but rather variable so that every div contains the same number of players - 25% in each.

Exactly. But they don't care as long as they have a base that spends money to get the job done. I agree that they should change to the strength system. I just don't think they will because it will cut into profits for a brief time. What they don't seem to get, is that one fix would probably get them more money than any other change. More retention = more $

Well the game is more of a war game then a economy game at least for the players. For Plato and crew it is a big time economy game for them.
Just think if it was built around economy only then after awhile players would get ahead without having to buy gold, as long as it stays a war game then there is always a idiot like myself that will BUY gold to get ahead. lol

Since the economy hit a wall and went stagnate. They tried a few things like, example: Rockets but for most the cost to equip them was to high. Then they lowered cost, that helped but not like a tournament where you use your supplies up and I think might MIGHT be a help to the economy at least short term.
On the modules without a great economy you can not run a great military and if you can not do either of those the political really is not to effective.

Hence why they should increase consumption 10X and fix the corresponding things EXCEPT current production levels. That would create scarcity and return a real market to the game. And it would fix the other modules over time.

First. Good article. Second, lol.. eRep isn't making anyone any money. I assume the employees are getting paid but that's probably about it.

They might get a little bit of a bump out of this contest, but I doubt it will be much. I think Gnil is right, this is probably the last hurrah for a lot of people. Then again, we are gluttons for punishment so, who's to say.

You are reading an article written by a citizen of eRepublik, an immersive multiplayer strategy game based on real life countries. Create your own character and help your country achieve its glory while establishing yourself as a war hero, renowned publisher or finance guru.